[gregr401]

The premise of the issue isn't that they are 'proactively preventing scammers', more to the joke that apparently Facebook and LinkedIn offer any level of verification other than enabling potential tunnels to data mine a users social connects. As mentioned towards the bottom of the article, there are plenty of eVerification services avail that minimize the potential for data about an account holder.

To note, the way airbnb has rolled this out is quite surprising (mandatory sampling of users, disrupting active reservations, etc). Starting to wonder if there are any decent competitors out there.

[brightsize]

German clone of Airbnb, Wimdu: http://www.wimdu.com/ I almost booked with Wimdu in the past but was put off by the fact that they didn't escrow the security deposit. I was expected to hand it over to the host when I arrived, and in theory get it handed back to me when I left. I hope that Wimdu has fixed this.